If you asked little girl me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said “a mom.”

That’s what I always wanted to be until one day when an adult told me something that shattered that dream.

They said, “In order to be a good mom, you will have to spank your kids.”

I said that I couldn’t do that.

They said, “You won’t be a good mom if you don’t.”

Little girl me could never imagine doing that. There was a fire in her heart built from love that refused to ever spank her children. That day, little me decided she would never be a mom because if she couldn’t be a good mom, she better let someone else do the job.

All through my twenties, if you asked if I wanted kids, I would have said “absolutely not.”

But it happened anyway. And as life has its way of pushing us towards our dreams, even the suppressed ones, I became a mom.

I stared down at my suckling newborn and I still couldn’t imagine myself ever hitting him in order to teach him right from wrong.

I poured over what many grandmothers would have considered to be unhinged parenting books. I studied Montessori blogs. I studied communication. I practiced various techniques and sought support through therapy and parent-coaching.

I was determined to find a better way.

I did it. I found a better way.

And it wasn’t a better way because our ancestors before us did it the “wrong way.”

It was simply better, the next step in healing our bloodline that my own mother prepared me for. And her mother prepared her for before that.

This path was long and the science we have today has been long-coming.

And every piece of it supports and affirms everything that my maternal instincts have already told me.

I wonder what would have been different if our mothers would have had access to it.

I wonder what it would have felt like for them to be told to listen to their instinct rather than to ignore their instinct.

Mostly, I’m proud. I’m proud for the ways that they carved their own path forward, stepping away from culture and listening to their own bodies.

I’m proud of the moment my own mom lifted the crying baby out of her crib and said “no, she won’t cry it out.” When the culture told her to let the baby cry.

I’m brought to life to have the opportunity to honor them more deeply by furthering the path they began to carve away at all those years ago, waiting for the science to prove their instincts, waiting for culture to catch up with them, to affirm them. But not waiting at all. Plowing forward despite of. Hoping.

How much harder it must have been for my mother to carve away in the dark compared to how I carve in the light.

Today, I can lead my children in confidence without having to yell, threaten, lecture, manipulate, or spank them.

Because there is a way.

The little girl in me is at peace with how I parent.

I’m not a perfect parent, but I am making huge dents in the path my ancestors started.

I am softening the cycle that has been imposed on us.

I have found a better way and not only has it benefited my children, but it has also set me free.